


a state of electrical new

by grinsekaetzchen



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Carla Runs the Show, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Season/Series 01, slightly unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 22:26:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grinsekaetzchen/pseuds/grinsekaetzchen
Summary: It goes like this: Carla protects the ones she loves and her family.





	a state of electrical new

**Author's Note:**

> This follows season 1 but I fudged with the time line a tiny bit, just as an FYI. Title is from "Fight Sleep" by Dagny.

It goes like this: Carla protects the ones she loves and her family. Sometimes the two overlap, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes she rearranges who belongs to which category. It doesn’t matter, she won’t let the people she cares about in some way get hurt.

She doesn’t remember when it started. Probably when her mother told her that family was above everything and Carla replied, “Even if you don’t like them?” She can’t remember now whether she said it to be smart or because she genuinely wanted to know.

Her mother, however, was unfazed. “Especially if you don’t like them.” It must have sunk into Carla’s bones then.

Polo is one of the rare people who moved from one group to the other. She’s known him since they were children, young and guileless – well, he at least - and their families went on holidays together. He was family long before he was anything else. There were countless holidays; the both of them running around on beaches, letting him drag her into the sea while she was scream-laughing into his ear. Back at home, they spent every minute together and sure, there were her girl friends, too, but no one became family the way Polo did. In the end, she always ended up sitting next to him and telling him all about her day, ranting about this and that and listening to him do the same.

She’s loved him all throughout but first and foremost he was family. Family she loved, but still family. Then, she fell _in_ love with him and he stepped into the second category. Not because he wasn’t family anymore, but the love for him was more important, more evident suddenly, and she couldn’t bear to have him share a space with people she only tolerated because they happened to have similar genes.  

Then, he consumed her. Everything was brand-new and navigating this relationship that had been strong for so long as it was changing and changing took all of Carla’s attention. She loved it.

Now, Christian comes to the school, though, and Polo is already dangerously close to being struck from the love category. Being with Polo no longer feels exhilarating but like a carefully rehearsed dance. When Carla leans in to kiss him, he knows how to move so she can reach him easily. When she reaches out her hand, she knows Polo will take it. When she sidesteps, Polo follows her. Where’s the fun in that?

So, she eyes Christian. Obviously and in front of Polo. Christian’s fit, he’s loud and he’s funny in a stupid way that surprises Carla. She finds herself genuinely laughing at his jokes and Polo notices, his brows drawn tight. Carla keeps watching out of the corner of her eye as Polo finally realises who she is looking at, as he starts to look as well as if he’s trying to figure out what she sees in Christian.

By the time that she broaches the topic, Polo is looking at Christian as often as she is. She smirks at Polo and tells him, “I’ve seen you look at him.” He doesn’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about (of course he doesn’t, he knows better than to play stupid and Carla sighs internally – their relationship is a dialogue in a play she has read so often she knows the lines by heart). His eyes flick to the ground for a second before looking back at her.

She smiles, slow and dangerous. It’s the smile that she practiced in front of the mirror together with Lu and Marina when they were young. Lu might think she’s the best at it, but Carla tends to disagree. No one can lift one corner of their mouth so slowly, so teasing, so sure that something intoxicating is going to follow. No one but her.

“Polo”, she says carefully, her voice pitched low, “don’t you want to see more? I know that you want to see more. Want to watch me and him.” She traces a line up his arm with one fingernail. He shudders beneath her. “Don’t you want to watch him take me? Don’t you want to see what I’ll let him do?” Polo’s eyes are wide and he’s frozen. Carla takes care to say the next things even more quietly, so that Polo has to lean in to catch every word. “Don’t you want to see what it’ll look like when he takes me, and I only think of _you_? Do you think he’d notice? That you’re the only one on my mind?”

Polo is breathing more heavily when she’s done, his pupils are blown wide and then he crashes forward to capture her lips in a kiss. Carla just so manages not to ruin it by smiling. Of course, Polo would say yes.

Sleeping with Christian is fun, but what’s heady is knowing that when she turns her head to the side she finds Polo watching them in the mirror. She stretches her hand out on the bed sheets, holds onto them instead of Polo and grins at him. Then, she closes her eyes and throws her head back, long hair fanning out around her like a halo for the worst kind of angel.

She knows what she looks like. There’s a mirror above her bed at home, installed for the single purpose of knowing all her angles. If she strains her ears she can pretend to hear Polo’s groan merging with Christian’s. She laughs. Christian comes up from between her thighs, a confused look on his face but a bright smile on his lips, and she reaches for him with the hand that was previously in his hair. He crawls over her, kisses her messily and Carla decides right there that she wants more the next time.

“I love you more than ever”, Polo tells her after and Carla agrees. She does, too. No one else comes close to him in the category of people she loves.

Carla has always been goal-oriented, so it’s only a matter of time before she grows impatient. She decides it’s better not to ask Polo this time but just rope him in once she’s already playing with Christian. She gets both of them off simultaneously while texting and she has never felt more powerful.

Lu doesn’t understand when she tries to explain it. “There are things other than being valedictorian that can make you feel powerful”, Carla tells her, tired of explaining something that comes naturally to her.

“Stringing two boys along isn’t power, it’s boring”, Lu says, waving her hand as if the topic is discarded just like that.

Carla blinks. “Well, at least my power trip doesn’t seem as if it’s going to end very soon. Yours, however…” She looks at Nadia, who’s entering the classroom.

Lu turns away from her sharply. Carla smirks and during the break she texts Polo.

It takes nothing to convince Polo of hosting a get-together between the three of them. “Let’s invite Christian”, Carla says and Polo’s head snaps in Christian’s direction immediately. Carla frowns a little. She hadn’t even noticed that Christian was close by, but at least Polo’s paying attention.

It goes well: food and sex and telling Christian how much they like him. He beams under their stare, his whole face lighting up and it’s the best thing Carla has seen in a while.

It’s also a different kind of power trip to be able to say, “ _We_ wanted you here” to Christian, holding Polo’s hand, letting him casually touch her and seeing the longing on Christian’s face. She wants to keep Christian and ruin him, she thinks to herself.

They take to buying clothes for Christian. He thinks they’re buying his silence – as if she ever thought that Christian could stay silent about anything -, but she doesn’t mind. He can think whatever he likes as long as Carla gets to see him in the clothes she chose and put out for him. He spins in front of her, wearing a disgustingly rich suit that she paid for without blinking once and the sight makes her heart beat faster and her hand itch towards him. She grins when she rips off the price tag, shrugging carelessly when Christian looks at her, shocked but smiling.

She thinks Christian is slowly making his way to being in the category of people she loves. Not yet, not for a long time but his road ahead is clear, and Carla’s grin gets brighter. (“Softer,” Polo had told her once, “your smile gets softer when you mean it.” “That suggests that I don’t always mean it,” she had answered. He had just shaken his head as if she was being obtuse on purpose. He had been right.)

And then there’s Polo, who follows her lead on everything. She can see him looking at Christian with interest, can see how he chooses the clothes carefully, too, though it doesn’t seem to give him the same power trip as her. Instead, his hands linger on Christian’s arms a bit too long when he pretends to brush a speck of dust away. He reaches for a hug and Christian gives him a high-five. Carla doesn’t miss the way Polo’s face falls, though he puts on a smile immediately afterwards. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

In school, she makes a point of wondering out loud where Christian is a couple times and each time Polo answers without thinking. Without looking. Right, Carla thinks. She needs to keep an eye on that.

Then, Polo gets Christian the modelling gig and Carla is distracted by his genius, until he fucks it up and she can already see her hard work go down the drain. It’s not enough to keep an eye on it evidently.

“Stop being jealous”, she tells Polo, voice cold and only the hint of a fake smile on her lips. “This was your idea”, she continues.

“It wasn’t my idea! It was yours!”

“Who got off on watching? It certainly wasn’t me.”

Polo sways back a little. She leaves him be, stalks off and only a few deep breaths keep her from putting Polo firmly in the family category. No reason to be hasty, she tells herself.

Then, there is the whole business with the stolen watch and Carla lies and tells the truth a bit and finally gets Polo to get Christian the shoot for the magazine he wanted all along. He’s so easy to convince, she thinks and doesn’t know who _he_ is. It doesn’t matter because now she is at home, stepping out of the shower, dropping her towel carelessly on the ground and climbing into the bed.

She remembers the last time Polo and Christian where here with her, right underneath the massive mirror that Polo doesn’t even notice anymore, and that Christian seems to enjoy nearly as much as she does. She rolls onto her stomach, grabs her phone and listens to a message from Polo telling her he and Christian both need to study; not time to party.

She frowns, but shrugs, splaying out on the bed again. She lets her hand wander down her body slowly. She doesn’t need her boys to satisfy her.

When she finds out what Christian and Polo actually did - when Christian _tells_ her- the world seems to stop turning for a moment. For one frightful moment, the categories in Carla’s head start rattling uncomfortably and her breath is caught in her chest. She shakes her head once to get the world to start spinning again, to put the categories right, pushes her shoulders down the way her mother taught her how to, and walks away, head held high.

Polo apologises. A lot. There are countless messages both written and spoken, and she ignores each and every one, enjoying the simple act of leaving him on read for days on end. He corners her in school and tries to apologise again. She doesn’t let him finish his sentence but interrupts and tells him that she doesn’t want anything to do with him. “Together”, she says, “that was the deal. Together or not at all.”

Time to bury a dead relationship. She cancels the family trip, puts all the pictures of her and Polo away and spends a couple of days in bed. For once, she isn’t interested in the mirror above her; it only reminds her that she is alone now. Polo tries once more, gives her a tasteless gift that she leaves right there with him and then she deliberately moves Polo into limbo.

He’s not a person she wants to love anymore, but not quite family either. And that’s what strikes her as stranger than anything else (that’s what hurts more than anything else): She can’t remember the last time that she had to worry about what the both of them were, where Polo fit in with her. Now, he’s free-floating and the thought of him makes her stomach twist.

She doesn’t know what to do with him.

The only thing that makes her feel slightly better is that Christian still unashamedly wants her. She tells him that she would like a friend, disregarding all his talk of a relationship. His face softens, the manic energy that embraces him at all time seems to abate a bit and he smiles at her, nearly reassuringly.

She likes him. It’s always been that way. She likes his body and his enthusiasm and his knack for making people laugh. Sometimes when she looks at him, she wonders if that’s what Polo sees in him as well but then she reminds herself that she doesn’t want Polo anymore. That he’s neither family nor someone she loves.

Christian becomes her friend. Granted, a friend she doesn’t talk to about anything important but someone she is happy to listen to and someone who will entertain her with kisses and sex. Still, they’re friends.

She is having sex with him in the showers, which is slightly more exciting than in a bed, if a little boring because they’re only two and not three people, when she hears Polo scream. She knows it’s him immediately. She pulls her dress down, ignores that Christian is naked and walks into Polo’s direction.  

She finds him bloody and distraught. His shirt is full of streaks of blood and he is wringing his hands, his mouth still half-opened as if he doesn’t know whether to scream again or not. He holds out the red watch towards her and Carla takes it, slowly understanding.

There are eight thoughts materialising in Carla’s head at the same time, but the one that overshadows all of them is not a thought at all but a memory: When they were seven, Polo accidentally dropped a tiny bunny to the ground when it bit him. Carla wasn’t quick enough to catch it and so they both watched it fall and fall until it reached the ground. And didn’t move. Carla remembers thinking that she had thought death was scary. This didn’t look scary, though, this looked like the bunny was sleeping a little crookedly. But Polo – Polo started crying immediately, huge, heaving sobs that made her embarrassed for him because she wasn’t meant to see him like that.

She remembers pulling him towards a sink and washing his hands. As if the memory of the little bunny could be washed away while he sobbed. She automatically does the same now. Takes his hands, more frantic than when it was just a bunny because there is so much blood and she hopes it’s a bunny but Carla doesn’t believe in hope when there are facts that point in a completely different direction. 

Polo’s hands are shaking, but he isn’t crying, not really. His breathing is irregular but there are no sobs, just stammered words that tell a horrible story. She yells at Christian to get Polo a shirt and then she gives Polo an alibi. He doesn’t seem to hear it.

“Polo”, she says, slow and dark. “Repeat after me.”

He does. He looks up at her as if she has all the answers – and she doesn’t, but this is familiar, this is _them_ – and repeats after her. Lies with her. Follows her lead as he always does, and she breathes a little more easily.

She whispers a promise to help him and to figure this out in his ear and watches him leave the party in a daze. Then, she puts on a smile and her hand on Christian’s arm to walk back out to the party.

 

It goes like this: Carla protects the ones she loves and her family.

Polo is both.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Find me on [tumblr](http://hotchocolatenthusiast.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream about Elite with me


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